


Crouch End Ally

by Precipice



Series: The Little Apartment Building series [4]
Category: Carrie - Stephen King, IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Because why the fuck not?, Gen, Horror, Humor, I REGRET NOTHING, Multiple Crossovers, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-19 21:01:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1483804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Precipice/pseuds/Precipice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A spin-off fanfic of 'The Little Apartment Building', but I like to think of it as 'The Despicable Diaries'' evil twin. </p><p>What's life like in a neighborhood that doubles as a sort-of-purgatory and a crossroad between several literary universes? Carrie White might have an idea.</p><p>WARNING. This fanfic will certainly contain: general weirdness, too many references, too little sense, stupid jokes, lame attempts at horror.</p><p>Books I'm thinking of mangling for shits and giggles:<br/>- Carrie<br/>- Rose Madder<br/>- Duma Key<br/>- IT<br/>- Pet Sematary<br/>- Night Shift (a short story collection)<br/>- Nightmares and Dreamscapes (a short story collection)<br/>- basically whatever I feel like using.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Cost of Making a Penny

**Crouch End Ally,  
** **Or an Unlit Alley for Unlikely Allies**  
  
**Chapter 1:  The Cost of Making a Penny**  
  
_Misery loves company,_  
_And company loves more,_  
_More loves everybody else,_  
_But hell was others._  
\- Emilie Autumn, ‘Misery Loves Company’  
  
_… Along came a spider,_  
_Who sat down beside her…_  
\- Mother Goose, ‘Little Miss Muffet’  
  
  
**I.**  
  
This isn’t a happy place.   
  
This is, first and foremost, a small square, formed by the intersection of five streets – correction, ‘alleys’ – and surrounded by gloomy redbrick buildings with blackened facades on four sides and on the fifth side by a forest-like cemetery. The alleys are narrow and uneven, and the buildings’ imposing shadows make them almost cave-like; their cobblestones’ pattern resembles that of a reptile’s hide and they are just as clammy, regardless of the weather. The local air is perpetually cold and moist, and the subtle stench of rot that wafts from the cemetery doesn’t help a bit. The few lampposts have been bent into curious shapes – zigzags and spirals – and there’s a malevolent quality to their light, not too different from the glow of certain deep-sea critters.   
  
A rusty street sign – the only readable one around here – declares that this place is called Crouch End Ally.  
  
  
**II.**  
  
Carrietta N. White (age unknown but probably close to seventeen) is talking to herself.  
  
“As far as I know, it’s... perfectly normal for immigrants to settle into the same neighborhood... prudent, even, and practical.”

She worries her upper lip with her teeth.

“Well, when I rounded up  _these_  particular ‘immigrants’ and dragged them to  _this_  particular ‘neighborhood’, the word I used to explain my behavior was neither prudent nor practical, but merciful.“  
  
She sniffs a little. She feels that she needs to elaborate.   
  
“Basically,  _I_  mercifully allow them to live,  _they_  mercifully allow  _me_  to allow them to live, and all of us mercifully allow a whole lot of people to live and die without ever becoming aware of our existence.”  
  
She narrows her eyes, staring at nothing in particular.  
  
“It's not an arrangement - there’s no comfort in it. And it’s not a compromise either - there’s no good will involved. “

She sighs.

“This is more of a... a deal between devils."  
  
She all alone in her room, and she’s talking to herself.  
  
  
**III.**  
  
At sunrise, when the light is pale and pink like raw flesh, Carrie thinks that Crouch End Ally resembles a scab that’s about to peel off – one flick of a fingernail and it’s gone. Easy-peasy.   
  
At noon, she’s more inclined to think of it as a puddle of dried blood – unpleasant, but harmless and ultimately manageable.  
  
She feels that she’s the closest to the truth after midnight, when the thought of her surroundings fills her mind with grisly images – deep wounds that have been filled with sand and stitched up with rusty iron coil, and fat white worms crawling beneath the reddened skin.  
  
This isn’t a happy place.  
  
  
**IV.**  
  
Carrie doesn’t remember how she ended up on Crouch End Ally. She doesn’t remember the day or the time of her arrival. She doesn’t remember the route that led her to this place. She might’ve come across one of its alleys during an afternoon stroll – one step, and she was lost. She might’ve perched on one of its roofs during a midnight flight – one second, and she was found.  
  
This doesn’t worry her as much as she thinks it should.  
  
She remembers a great many other things, though. Her previous life, for example – the closet and the blood, the pain, the humiliation, the loneliness, the hopelessness, the rage. There’s a bitter sweetness to these memories, not dissimilar to the taste of cold coffee with brown sugar, and although they often keep her awake at night or make her fidgety during the day, she still treasures them, like one might treasure their own baby teeth. She wishes she could carry them all on her sleeve, like a bleeding heart, like a warning – this is what I can do, this is what I can live through, this is what happens when I snap.   
  
Shame and pride are two sides of the same coin, and she can make a coin land on whichever side she wants.  
  
  
**V.**  
  
Carrie snaps her fingers.   
  
Hand gestures have become an inseparable part of her telekinetic routine – a wave of the hand, a flick of the wrist, a pointed finger. She finds that it’s much easier to pour the command out of her brain and into the world with a simple gesture, rather than with a raw thought. Gestures are slow and heavy, they rely on muscles and bones and veins and nerves; thoughts are lightning bolts and sparks and sunlight – brilliant and dangerous.  
  
Anyway.  
  
A snap of her fingers, and it all comes together in less than five seconds: a beautiful lace cover over the small round table; a painted white chair with a pink velvet seat cushion; two bottles of soda.  
  
She walks up to the table and takes the only seat. Her motions are slow and deliberate – she feels extremely self-conscious. She can feel the weight of her dress on her shoulders and the length of her hair along her back; she can feel her teeth touching the inside her mouth, and the blood vessels in her fingertips seem to ache.  
  
She opens the sodas. A palm above the bottle, fingers straight, a circling motion – and the stopper goes ‘pop!’  
  
And she only had to break half a dozen bottles until she got the hang of it.  
  
Carrie lifts the second bottle of soda above her head, to the large spider-shaped thing hanging from the ceiling.   
  
“I hope you like coke, ma’am.”  
  
  
**VI.**  
  
Carrietta N. White (age unknown but probably close to seventeen) crosses her legs, then uncrosses them.   
  
“Try to imagine.... hm, a ragtag bunch of... of monstrous individuals from another universe with almost nothing in common.... trying to be friendly.”

She shakes her head.

“And it’s not just that we have terribly little in common, but what we _do_ have in common is actually terrible.“  
  
A moment of silence.   
  
“I’m talking about the murders, of course. We’re all murderers, in one way or another… and that way is usually pretty direct – like, tear-off-their-arm-and-make-it-wave-at-them kind of direct."

She smiles a little at her own words.

"We are all cruel, is what I'm trying to say... and if I can consider myself to be the least cruel, it's only because I don't allow the others to read the books.”  
  
She seems to remember something.  
  
“Ah, yes, the books. We share the books too… there are books dedicated to us – filled with our stories... with our skin and our blood and our bones.”

She licks her lips.

“The first books appeared in a... a library, I think, not too far from here, but now I find them on my nightstand."  

She hums.

“There’s a picture of the author - they're all written by the same author - on their backs. It’s funny, he kind of looks like my old English teacher, Mr. Edwin King.”   
  
She is all alone in her room, and she’s talking to herself.  
  
“And, of course, we share this neighborhood, with its shabby buildings and flickering lampposts and strange dark alleys which lead me to..."  
  
  
**VII.**  
  
“… think that places similar to Crouch End Ally appear at the points where two or more universes are so close they almost-sort-of ‘merge’...”   
  
The soda in the bottles has gone flat.  
  
“… like a buffer zone or something…”  
  
Carrie is leaning back in the chair, tilting it back onto two legs and making it rock her gently. She keeps her eyes fixed on the large spider-shaped thing on her ceiling. It’s been hanging there for the past hour like a dark chandelier. Its teeth-filled jaws move constantly, but produce neither sound nor saliva.   
  
“… the alleys that can lead one out of Crouch End Ally and into another universe. I’m certain of four, so far. ” Carrie starts counting on her fingers. “One alley for London, England, 1980. One alley for Arkham, Massachusetts, 1936. One alley for Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, 1790. One alley for...”  
  
“I know.”  
  
Its ‘voice’ isn’t really a voice, but a special kind of white noise that’s simultaneously a parched hiss and a screamed thought; it’s the sort of ‘voice’ that doesn’t interrupt other people, but its own silence.   
  
Carrie grins, or at least bares her own teeth.  
  
“So my assumptions are correct, then.”   
  
"Partly.”  
  
  
**VIII.**  
  
She first suspected that It was close by when the book appeared on her nightstand. She spent the rest of the day in her bed, reading and feeling sick.  
  
Normally, she has no trouble locating things – she can wrap her mind around anyone and anything, be it people, wires, pipes, memories, walls, or knives – but this time she isn’t sure what exactly she’s looking for. This is why she hates dealing with shapeshifters.  
  
Luckily (though it was good luck for some and bad luck for others), in less than a week she finds the shoe – a child’s shoe, brown and new – on the doorstep of an abandoned house not too far from Crouch End Ally.   
  
  
**IX.**  
  
She finds It in the house’s cavern-like basement – a monstrous shape in the center of a monstrous cobweb. Its eyes glisten in red-orange and remind her of livid embers, but once her own eyes become accustomed to the darkness, she thinks that their light is not too different from the light coming from behind the horizon at dawn.  
  
She thinks she knows just what kind of light such a dawn might promise – a light more ancient and more alien than all stars that have ever shone upon this world, a light that’s never been worshiped as a deity because people don’t always need a religion to know that something is an abomination.  
  
She flies straight towards It, her thoughts trailing behind her like a veil until they’ve filled the place, deep and dark and damp and littered with debris as it is. She learns that the basement used to have two levels, until the floor between them caved in. She learns that the child, whose mangled corpse lies in the lower part of the cobweb, was nine years old and only entered the house on a dare. She learns that the house’s pipes are still intact and also very comfortable as far as It is concerned. She learns that the child managed to write his name on the basement’s door before It opened the door (and Its jaws) wide for him. She learns that It is… that It is…   
  
When they actually talk, she isn’t sure whether they are using their voices or their minds.  
  
“You are cheating.” It tells her matter-of-factly.  
  
“What is that supposed to mean?” She asks and tries to keep her face as blank as possible.   
  
“Your brain.” It points at her forehead, as if she didn’t know where that organ might reside. “It’s different. It didn’t bleed at the sight of me.”  
  
Carrie attempts to wrap her thoughts around It, but she can feel them burn away and turn to proverbial dust as soon as they get too close to It. She sighs. All she can be sure of now are Its eyes, Its jaws and Its claws. And that It kind of sort of looks like a spider.   
  
“You don’t really want me to die, do you?” She has to ask, no matter what the answer may be.  
  
“No.” It starts moving around its web, pulling at random threads, much like a housewife might pace aimlessly around her house and clean this or that. “I want to sleep and dream and eat and sleep again. Nothing more. Nothing less.”  
  
Carrie coughs, as if to disguise her laughter.   
  
“Funny coincidence.” It’s neither funny nor a coincidence. “Because you see, I want to feed you.”  
  
It stops twitching and stares at her. Its eyes seem to harden, like amber, and suddenly Carrie feels like a tiny insect about to be trapped in their depths.   
  
She doesn’t look away.  
  
“With your own flesh?” Its clawed legs drum on the cobweb like impatient fingers on a table. “Tempting, but I think I’ll pass.”  
  
“With flesh of my own choice.” Carrie is impressed by how calm her own voice sounds when all she wants to do is fly backwards and far, far away from this place and this creature.  
  
“Ah, my own personal butcher… and here I thought I had found a veritable angel.”  
  
“Angels are said to be soldiers, and soldiers are said to be butchers with ribbons on their chests.”  
  
“Or in their hair.” It makes a motion with one of its claws around what’s supposed to be Its own head.  
  
Carrie nods and fakes a smile. Indeed, she’s tied her hair back with a ribbon.    
  
“So what do you say?”   
  
It doesn’t miss a beat.  
  
“Once a month.”   
  
Carrie shrugs.  
  
“Fine.”   
  
“And make sure they are delicious.”  
  
This time, Carrie actually laughs. It’s a hysterical sound, shrill and ugly and absolutely glorious.  
  
“Salted?” She has to ask, even though she knows the answer.  
  
“Terrified.” If It finds her question suspicious, It doesn't say anything about it.  
  
“Huh. Easy-peasy.”  
  
  
**X.**  
  
The girl and the spider stare at each other. The unspoken words ‘you bitch’ seem to hang in the air between them like a trail of spit. Carrie can already tell that they’ll get along famously.  
  
“I’ve re… heard that you used to, hm, moonlight as, uh, Pennywise the Clown. Is that true?”  
  
“Yes, so?”  
  
“Ah. But you’re also somewhat female, right?”  
  
“Yes, so?”  
  
“So does that mean I can call you Penny?”  
  
“Ye… NO!"


	2. That Time of the Month

**Crouch End Ally,  
Or an Unlit Alley for Unlikely Allies  
  
Chapter 2: That Time of the Month**  
  
  
 _“Will you step into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly;  
“’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.  
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,  
And I have many curious things to show when you are there."  
"Oh no, no," said the little fly; "to ask me is in vain,  
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."  
"I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high.  
Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the spider to the fly.”_  
  
\- Mary Howitt, ‘The Spider and the Fly’  
  
  
 _My hands are of your colour; but I shame  
To wear a heart so white…_  
  
\- William Shakespeare, ‘Macbeth’  
  
  
 **I.**  
  
Crouch End Ally isn’t exactly spacious, but there’s plenty of room for both of them, and that’s enough.   
  
For now.   
  
Carrie lets It have the alleys – already dark and damp and cold, they’re quickly transformed into veritable tunnels with a belly’s worth of cobweb (It’s words) and an artistically sprinkled clawful of dust. The result is rather impressive, if a little disconcerting; after all, Carrie isn’t exactly used to having her house (well,  _building_ ) surrounded with giant cobwebs, no matter how beautifully they sparkle as they strangle whatever hapless rays of sunshine reach the alleys over the towering walls and roofs. But that’s a minor issue – It seems to honestly enjoy its sprawling new abode, and Carrie certainly prefers to levitate over the streets rather than walk on them, so it’s not as if either of them is unhappy about their arrangement.   
  
If anything, they certainly communicate more easily now; whenever Carrie decides she wants to talk to It, she simply throws something into the cobweb – usually something alive.  
  
  
 **II.**  
  
Carrietta N. White (age unknown but probably close to seventeen) is sitting with her ankles crossed.  
  
“I am not brooding.”    
  
She is all alone in her room, and she’s talking to herself.  
  
“It’s just that there are far too many weak points – sometimes I feel as if my mind is bruised all over and so sensitive to everything and anything, I barely dare use it.”  
  
She considers her own words for a second, turning them over in her head like curiously-shaped pebbles, and then smiles.  
  
“Bruised.  _Not_  broken. Just bruised.”  
  
  
 **III.**  
  
The girl is frail and fair and pale. Her eyes are so dark they seem to cast shadows on her face - blue-gray rings of exhausted skin and silent discontent.   
  
“It’s not about power.” The girl claims. “It’s about control.”   
  
The spider is bloated and black and bored. Its eyes are so red they resemble rubies – hard and ancient and rough, like something dragged out from the bowels of the Earth.  
  
“Is there a difference?” The spider asks.  
  
The girl sighs. The cobwebs tremble. The spider doesn’t.   
  
Power. Control.    
  
“Yes, I’d say there  _is_  a difference.”  
  
  
 **IV.**  
  
They begin to refer to those special several days as That Time of the Month.   
  
It’s quite appropriate, considering that those delightful few days are meant for blood and pain and murder and anthropophagy… in other words, for Carrie to feed It as promised. Neither is terribly excited about it, though, mostly because when That Time of the Month rolls around they can’t help themselves from having the exact same argument over and over again.   
  
It begins when Carrie insists on bringing adults instead of children (“It’s practically the same thing, they’re all human beings.”), to which It argues that one child equals two adults (“No, it’s not!”), therefore Carrie should bring It more people to make up the difference; Carrie declares that this makes no sense (“What?!”), It claims that it makes perfect sense (“It takes two adults to produce on child. Simple math, really.”), and then they scream at each other for a while, until Carrie caves in and promises to bring the extra adult (“Alright, alright, just… stay where you are. Don’t go hunting or anything.”).   
  
  
 **V.**  
  
Carrietta N. White (age unknown but probably close to seventeen) inspects her nails. They are short and brittle and naturally pink.   
  
“I can see it. I can see cruelty.”  
  
She tries to keep her nails clean. She tries to keep her hands clean. She tries and she fails.   
  
“It’s red, like blood. It stains the mind. And I can see it.”  
  
Her already small hands clench into even smaller fists on their own volition. She watches the knuckles go white as the bones threaten to break through her skin.  
  
“I walk down the street and I see all kinds of people with all sorts of minds and some of them are just so…  _red_. Redder than… than  _I_  was at my prom. Heh.”   
  
Her lips twitch and she smiles for a second, for the hell of it.   
  
“And I can’t help but wonder why they aren’t dead already. Why are they getting away with it. Why are they being tolerated.”   
  
She blinks away the prickle behind her eyes.   
  
“Why wasn’t I.”   
  
She is all alone in her room, and she’s talking to herself.  
  
  
 **VI.**  
  
They always cry.   
  
Dry, heavy sobs that choke them and mutate into coughing fits. Faces rendered unrecognizable under the mask of agony and horror. Short-lived attempts to scream for help. And finally, tears.   
  
This one, a fair-haired man in his thirties, is being particularly weepy. Sure, his spine is broken in at least two places – being wrung like a towel usually does that to one’s bones – but it can’t possibly hurt  _that_  much. And yes, being dragged into a dark alley by an invisible force could probably bring anyone to tears, but he could at least  _try_  to preserve what whatever’s left of his dignity.   
  
Carrie tosses the man into the cobwebs and waits for It, safely perched on the nearest roof where the smell of blood can’t reach her. She always forces herself to stay and watch It eat – something about facing the consequences of her own actions, or so she likes to think.  
  
The truth is – the truth that follows her conscience like a shadow, dark and persistent… anyway, the ugly truth is that she enjoys this.   
  
  
 **VII.**  
  
Carrie waves the book in front of It – a veritable brick of a book with a black hard cover, the title and the author’s name written in large red letters on the spine. The grin on her face is genuine for once, and all the more obnoxious for it.  
   
“Looks familiar?” She coos, as if she were showing a mirror to a baby.  
  
“Not funny.” It snaps – literally snaps, with its teeth and everything.  
  
“Come on, it’s a little bit funny.” She insists.   
  
It reaches for the book, but Carrie slaps its claw-tipped foot away. The nerve. It glares daggers at the girl for good measure. She’s no longer smiling, but her good mood remains. As well as her intent to be a pest.  
  
“You are being ridiculous.”   
  
“You are a huge black spider with red eyes. Your book is a huge black brick with the title written in red. It’s rather neat, no?”  
  
“The word you are looking for is ‘dumb’. As in, ‘dumb coincidence’.”  
  
“Whatever, that’s just your opinion.”   
  
Carrie opens the book with great flair and leafs through the pages with mock enthusiasm. It doesn’t actually mind the girl having access to the objectively sensitive information regarding Its nature and weaknesses that’s no doubt included in the strange book. What It  _does_  mind is her gloating about it.   
  
Carrie is  _good_  at gloating. She has pretty enough teeth for it – white and even; her mind is sharp enough to think up cutting remarks on the spot. And most importantly, what she lacks in experience she makes up for in enthusiasm.   
  
Despite itself, It thinks it might start liking her. Eventually.   
  
And then Carrie tells It about the other books.   
  
How they began appearing on her nightstand, as if eager to be picked up. Books about wicked men and strange women. Weird stories about weird creatures. Sometimes it wasn’t even a book. Sometimes it was a magazine with a richly illustrated cover, or a bunch of old newspapers, or several hand-written pages in an envelope.   
  
Carrie even tells It about her own book. How she’s read it nineteen times so far. How she feels like dying every time she finishes it. It doesn’t ask why she’s telling It all this. It understands the girl’s need to share this information, even though It doesn’t share the need itself. But then Carrie surprises It.  
  
“And here’s why I’m actually telling you all this. Some of these books were written by the same man who wrote ours. And it’s _them_  I worry about the most.”   
  
It stares at her for a long while before It asks the question It feels she wants It to ask. It’s a stupid question and they both know it, but at least it’s not unanswerable.  
  
“What are  _they_  like?”  
  
“Numerous.”   
  
“And?”  
  
“Dangerous.”   
  
If anything, now It knows why Carrie spends so much time away from Crouch End Ally, and it’s not because she’s being picky about whom she brings over for It to gobble up…   
  
Wait.  
  
“You’re not planning to fling  _them_  into my cobweb, are you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost used the phrase 'gambrel roofs'. 
> 
> Almost. 
> 
> ***
> 
> Okay, so the reason this chapter took me four months to write is... not really a good one. But it's a reason nonetheless.
> 
> At first I wanted to write this chapter from the POV of a Patrick Hockstetter-esque preteen psychopath who tortures kittens and ultimately gets what's coming to him. This was going to be written partly as a very obvious and obnoxious nod to the novel IT, and partly as a tribute to an acquaintance of mine who shall remain nameless but who refuses to own any pets because he suspects that he might... uh, be mean to them. Not that he would ever read any of my fanfics; it's just that the things he said made quite an impression on me and I want to explore the subject in a way that's not limited to the confines of my own mind.
> 
> This is all well and good, but... kittens, man. D: My imagination has its standards, y'know.


	3. Nowhere to Go but Everywhere

**Crouch End Ally,**  
**Or an Unlit Alley for Unlikely Allies**  
  
**Chapter 3: Nowhere to Go but Everywhere**  
  
_When you live in the dark for so long, you begin to love it._ _And it loves you back, and isn’t that the point? You think, the face turns to the shadows, and just as well. It accepts, it heals, it allows._ _But it also devours._

— Raymond Carver, ‘Late Fragment’  
  
_I read; I travel; I become._  
― Derek Walcott  
  
  
**I.**  
  
Carrie holds herself above the rooftops, walking along the ridges – left, right, left; her skirts slap against her legs like the sails of a boat. From time to time she jumps – floats – up, either to get from one roof to another or to get off the roof altogether. She can fly (or levitate, or whatever the correct term is) just as easily as she can bend a spoon without touching it or survey a street without looking at it; Carrie has this mind-over-matter thing down to a fine art, and the thing about art is that one has to constantly push themselves beyond what they consider to be their limits. Honed skills beat raw talent nine times out of ten, or so she thinks. She’s yet to be proven wrong.  
  
She can sense when she leaves the 'borders' of Crouch End Ally – the change in the air as she passes from one universe to another is tangible in a way that’s almost painful, like passing through a beaded curtain, except the beads seem to rattle against her very bones. Every time she tries not to shudder, and every time she fails to suppress her twitching. Every time she is forced to fly back into the semi-darkness of the cobbled alleys, lest she loses her quite literal grip of herself and falls off the roof.  
  
Her memories of her ventures outside the alleys are blurry, as if she's remembering dreams rather than real experiences. Then again, so are her memories of her past life.   
  
She doesn't like to ponder the implications of this.  
  
  
**II.  
  
** Carrietta N. White (age unknown but probably close to seventeen) twirls a lock of hair between her fingers.   
  
“I can't remember."  
  
She curls the lock around her finger, then uncurls it.   
  
"I can't remember a single thing that I've done or said or felt, from the night of my death till the day I arrived here. And I just know I have... It's hard to explain."  
  
She inspects the lock for split ends. She finds none.  
  
"If my mind were a photo album, some of its pages would be empty. The photographs fell off..."  
  
She is all alone in her room, and she’s talking to herself.  
  
"... or were taken out."  
  
  
**III.**  
  
Carrie knows that someone - or perhaps some _thing_ \- new is going to arrive, and soon, when one morning she finds another book on her nightstand, right on top of the brick that is "IT" and her own significantly shorter story.   
  
The new book turns out to be a collection of short stories. She doesn't leave the bed until she's read it from cover to cover, only pausing to stare at the wall and consider which of the pests mentioned on the pages is (or - Heaven forbid! - _are_ ) most likely to end up in which one of the three (well, technically four) universes that border Crouch End Ally.  
  
To her surprise (and relief), the pest in question turns out to have already arrived, and straight into Its cobwebs too, if the screams are any indication.   
  
  
**IV.**

Carrietta N. White (age unknown but probably close to seventeen) raises her right hand in front of her face, palm facing out, fingers spread.   
  
"Five fingers - five alleys." she states matter-of-factly. "Between five fingers - four spaces. Four spaces - four places, four times... four universes."   
  
She folds her pinky and ring finger.  
  
"Alleys O1 and O2. On each side of the cemetery. O1 leads from Crouch End Ally to the ocean. O2 leads from the ocean to Crouch End Ally. Entrance and Exit. Not sure to where or when..."  
  
She sighs and closes her eyes for a second. There's something she's trying to force down her subconscious, away from the inside of her eyelids. She isn't sure what it is, only that she wants it off her mind until she feels like dealing with it.  
  
"Anyway."  
  
She folds her middle finger.   
  
"Alley AM1936. It leads to Arkham, Massachusetts, year 1936. I'd love to brick it up, but... the _cults_ they have out there!" She shakes her head. "Just begging to be fed to something like It."  
  
She folds her index finger.  
  
"Alley JM1790. It leads to Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, year 1790. I've only been there once. The town appears to be deserted, and I think I'd rather not know why."  
  
She folds her thumb.  
  
"Alley LE1980. It leads to London, England, year 1980. It's kind of weird..." The corners of her mouth twitch upwards. "Well, weird _er_. For one thing, the area is called Crouch End - like this here neighborhood. Also... it's always sunset when I get there. Always and regardless of when I set off from here."   
  
She is all alone in her room, and she’s talking to herself.

 

 **V.**  
  
The spider-shaped abomination's head is mere inches away from Carrie's face. The fact that she's quite literally backed It into a corner doesn't really matter at the moment.

"I. Don't. Want him." It hisses-screams-thinks at her.   
  
"Why. Not?" Carrie spits right back at It through gritted teeth.   
  
Its legs are as thick as hers, and longer than she is tall. They are positioned around her not unlike the bars of a cage, and stomp angrily from time to time, their claws clacking against the cobblestones.   
  
"I am not a guillotine."   
  
Stomp.   
  
"I am not a graveyard."   
  
Stomp.   
  
"I am not a garbage can."   
  
Stomp. 

"I am not a..."  
  
"I thought we had a deal." Carrie interrupts, too annoyed with It to appreciate the metaphors. "I bring you food, you eat the food, you eat nothing _else_ , we live happily ever after."  
  
Its ruby-red eyes glisten when It nods.  
  
"The deal still holds. However..."  
  
Stomp.  
  
"... you didn't bring _jack_ , this time." 

Carrie's jaw drops for what's probably the first time in a long while. 

"Oh..."

If Its current shape allowed for it, It would probably be grinning right now.   
  
"You brought nothing. I caught nothing. He walked into my web all by himself. Which means..." 

Carrie places a hand over her mouth to hide the growing snarl.   
  
"... you can choose not to eat him." 

"Uh, could you two perhaps... _not_ talk about me as if I'm not here?"  
  
Girl and spider turn to glare at the skinny young man caught in the cobweb, and more specifically in a particularly dense patch of rope-like strings that blocks most of alley L1980. He's somehow managed to cocoon himself just by flailing so wildly at the sight of It, the abomination deemed him too amusing to kill... or so It told Carrie when she arrived, alerted by the man's shrill screaming. He is significantly calmer now, if still pale and haggard. His appearance is exactly as Carrie imagined it while reading - average height, long-ish hair, horn-rimmed glasses, even the mismatched socks are present.   
  
His eyes meet Carrie's, and he smile at her. Attempts to, at least. She responds by turning back to It and saying:  
  
"Between the _two_ of us, you should eat him all the same."   
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! It's been... what, 8 months since the last update?


End file.
